Survival Instincts
by Destroyer Ov Nations
Summary: Lieutenant Kedair and Doctor Tarses are trapped on a planet, looking for a missing away team. Using characters from the star trek Destiny book series
1. Chapter 1

Survival Instincts

Lieutenant Lonnoc Kedair was frantically trying to get her shuttle under control. "We're gonna crash, aren't we?" Doctor Simon Tarses said, stumbling in from the back. "Not if I can help it," she answered as the ground got closer and closer.

The two of them had been sent down by Captain Ezri Dax to rescue an away team led by Commander Samaritan Bowers that got stuck on the planet. They learned after they beamed them down that they couldn't beam them back up, so they were trying a shuttle. That wasn't working that great either.

"Prepare for impact!" She yelled to Tarses, grabbing hold of her chair. The shuttle hit the ground hard, throwing Kedair onto Tarses and slamming them both into the wall. After they bounced around for a while the shuttle came to a sliding stop.

Kedair glanced out the front window and saw only sky. After a closer look she realized they were about to fall over the edge of a cliff. "Get out! Quick!" she screamed to Tarses, who had just realized what was going on and was jumping out of the shuttle.

Kedair followed him and watched as the shuttle dropped over the side of the cliff. "There goes our way back up," Tarses remarked. They stood there in silence, observing the planets surface.

They were standing on a cliff with a grassy field behind it. Along one edge of the field was a large forest. Along another edge was a sandy beach with an orange colored ocean. Looking over the edge of the cliff, Kedair realized she couldn't see where the bottom was.

The green, scaly woman tapped her combadge. "Kedair to Aventine. Aventine, come in please," she tried. "It's no use. There must be something in the atmosphere preventing us from communicating with the ship or beaming up." Tarses nodded, realizing their situation.

"Well, let's start looking for Sam and the others," Kedair said. They headed off across the field in the direction of the forest.

Meanwhile...

Commander Samaritan Bowers pulled his foot out of his boot and watched it sink in the quicksand. "Darn it! That's the second thing of mine that's sunk today!" he shouted. Ensign Yuter carefully walked around the sinkhole.

"We might want to keep moving,sir," Yuter said, walking ahead of the very mad Sam. "We should get out of this forest before dark." "Yeah, good idea. It's just a shoe anyway," Sam replied, following Yuter through the bushes.

They came into a clearing. "This looks like a good spot to set up camp for the night," Sam said. "Go collect some wood and I will make a shelter here." Yuter nodded and disappeared behind some leaves hanging down from a tree.

A moment later, Sam heard Yuter call for him. "Come here, Commander! Come see this!" Sam pushed through the hanging leaves the ensign went through and found himself in another clearing. This one was more colorful and there was an interesting flower in the middle of it.

"It was just open a second ago. You shoulda seen it!" Yuter exclaimed. Sam walked over to the flower and studied it. It was closed at the moment and it reached up to his shoulder. It was the color of a jaguar, golden with spots all over it.

Then, suddenly, it opened up and there was what looked like diamonds inside. Yuter reached in and grabbed them before Sam could protest. The ensign pulled the diamonds out with a big smile. Then a purple mist started coming out of the flower.

Sam backed up a couple steps, but the mist spread too fast. It was surrounding him and Yuter quickly, and the last thing Sam remembers was the color purple.

Somewhere else...

"I'm hungry!" Tarses complained. "And tired!" Kedair sighed and stopped walking. "Fine! We can rest. It's too bad that all our food went over the cliff in the shuttle though," she replied. Tarses sat on a nearby log.

Kedair looked up at the sky. "It's getting dark. Should we find a place to sleep?" she asked. Tarses nodded tiredly. They had been walking for five hours in search of the missing away team and had found no sign of them.

Kedair looked around, but didn't see a good place to sleep. She grabbed the half-Romulan doctor's arm and pulled him to his feet. "Let's look around a bit," she told him. They walked around for a little bit until Kedair found a huge rock sticking out of the ground.

"Under this rock should be good enough for now," she said. Then they both laid down under it. "This is very uncomfortable," Tarses complained once again. "Haven't you ever gone camping?" Kedair asked, closing her eyes. "No, I haven't," the doctor answered, rolling over onto his side. "I'm not..." "Good night, Doctor," Kedair cut him off. "Good night," he replied, rolling over once again.

They eventually fell asleep, wondering where Sam could have possibly led his away team.


	2. Chapter 2

Kedair awoke to her stomach growling. She rolled over and found that Dr Tarses was gone. Getting up from under the rock, she saw him studying plants.

He noticed her watching him and said, "I was hungry. Many things about these plants suggest they are poisonous." He walked over to her. "We should probably hunt for animals," he suggested.

"Okay, we need weapons," Kedair said, grabbing some long sticks off the ground. "Collect these. They'd make good spears." Tarses nodded and went in search of more sticks.

Kedair sharpened one end of the sticks with a rock. She did the same to the ones Tarses gave her when he returned. "I also found this bark hanging off a tree. It could be used as a bowstring," he told her. "Go get more," she said.

She found another stick and tied the ends of the flexible bark to the top and bottom of it. She grabbed a spear and tested the home-made bow, hitting a tree with perfect aim. After Tarses brought more bark, she made another bow for him.

"Go ahead, test it out," Kedair said, handing the second bow to Tarses. Grabbing a spear, he shot at a tree but the sharpened stick fell onto the ground in front of his feet instead. "Don't you know how to do this?" Kedair asked.

"Nope. As I said before, I've never went camping," Tarses answered. Kedair rolled her eyes and replied, "Then I'll have to teach you." She showed him how to do it and he tried again, this time hitting a bush next to the tree.

After atleast ten more tries where he missed, he finally hit the tree three times in a row. "Alright, I think you've got it," Kedair said. "Now let's go find some breakfast."

They went deeper into the forest away from where they slept and walked until they saw an animal that resembled a dog-sized squirrel. "Okay, listen Simon. The trick is to get the bow and arrow ready and then get a little closer," she told him, raising her bow and arrow and aiming it at the animal.

He copied her, following behind to get closer to the target. Then all of a sudden his hand slipped and his spear went straight through Kedair's back. "Darn it, Simon! Aim it at the animal, not me!" She yelled, startling their prey and making it run.

"Sorry! Are you okay?" Tarses exclaimed. She turned around to face him, seeing the shocked look on his face. She pulled the spear the rest of the way through her stomach. "Yeah, I'll be fine, but no more bows and arrows for you!" she said, taking his weapon. "Go back to camp and make a fire, I'll hunt by myself."

He left to go do that as the rest of her injury healed quickly. _Good thing he's stuck with me and not somebody else_, she thought. She tracked down the animal that caused all that and found it. Aiming her spear straight toward it, she let go and it stabbed the animal through the head.

She grabbed hold of the spear with the animal dangling from it and headed back to camp. Once she got back, she saw no fire. She saw Tarses rubbing two sticks together over a pile of leaves and grass surrounded by rocks.

She watched him for a moment as he threw the sticks aside into a pile of thicker ones like them and tried with a couple small rocks. He huffed in frustration and looked up, noticing Kedair standing there. "Never built a fire before either?" she questioned, kneeling down next to him.

With a shake of his head, he handed the rocks to her. She hit them together three times until a spark flung from them and set the leaves and grass on fire. He threw some sticks ontop of it. "There we go, there's our fire," Kedair said, grabbing the animal and hanging it over the fire.

After they ate, they went in search for Sam and his missing away team in the forest.


	3. Chapter 3

Kedair and Tarses had been wandering around looking for their missing crewmembers for three hours. That was when Kedair saw footprints. "They have to be from the away team!" she said, following the footprints. When she looked back to Tarses, she saw he wasn't there.

"Simon! Where are you?" she called. There was no answer. "Simon!" She walked back the way she came, still calling for him. She found him a while back observing a beetle crawling across a low tree branch. She grabbed his arm and said, "Simon! You're gonna get yourself lost!" He smiled at her and they continued walking.

They followed the footprints for another hour until Tarses wanted to rest. They sat on a log for a couple minutes. Then Kedair heard something behind them and she jumped off the log and turned around. Tarses looked up at her curiously.

There was a giant flytrap flower behind him. "Move!" Kedair yelled at him, but he was too slow. The flower grabbed his arm in its petals and held on as he tried to escape. Kedair leaped to help him but a vine tangled around her foot and she fell on the ground.

She grabbed a stick next to her and hit the vine until it snapped in half. Tarses was screaming his head off trying to pull his arm out. Kedair whacked the flower with her stick a couple times until it let go. Then they ran away from that area, right into something very sticky.

Untangling herself from it, she saw it was a giant spiderweb. Tarses shrieked, earning a 'really?' look from Kedair. He shrugged and smiled sheepishly back at her. "Hurry, let's go around it before...," she said, turning around only to come face to face with a giant spider.

Tarses shrieked again, causing the spider to leap on him, knocking him to the ground. Kedair jumped on it, rolling around on the ground with it for a moment until she got back on her feet. It lunged at her and she easily stepped aside.

"Catch!" Tarses yelled, throwing a spear toward her. It landed way behind her because Tarses has bad aim. She threw a quick glare at him before she dodged another attack from the spider. Bounding over it, she crime-rolled, grabbed the spear and held it forward. The spider jumped on her and was stabbed by the spear and she threw it aside.

Wiping the dust off her pants, she continued walking. "Hope we don't run into any more of them," she said. Tarses agreed in silence and followed behind her.

After another half hour of following the footprints, Kedair saw quicksand and she carefully walked around it. After walking another few steps she heard Tarses scream help and she looked behind her. He was struggling in the quicksand, already waist-deep.

"Can't you ever stay out of trouble!" she exclaimed, grabbing his arm and pulling him out. They walked more in silence until they came to a clearing. They heard laughter coming from behind a tree that resembled a weeping willow.

Pushing through the hanging leaves, she came to another clearing, this one more colorful. She made sure Tarses was still behind her before going forward. There was a golden, spotted flower in the middle of the clearing. She looked around and saw the missing crewmen.

Commander Samaritan Bowers, the smart, serious first officer of the Aventine, was rolling around in a patch of colorful flowers singing a song. Ensign Yuter was dangling upside down from a tree branch, swinging back and forth while he whistled along.

"Commander?" Kedair said, stepping closer to Sam. Tarses watched in amusement. Kedair dragged Sam off the ground and he laughed. "Sam!" "Yeah? Would you like to ride my unicorn too?" he asked, and then he started prancing around the flower in the middle of the clearing.

"Okay, something is definately wrong with him," Tarses said, trying to get Yuter to come down from the tree. "Sam, snap out of it!" Kedair declared. Sam grabbed her scaly hands and started spinning around, forcing her to go along with it.

He sang ring around the rosy until he got to the end and pulled her down to the ground with him. Just then her combadge chirped. "...Kedair...you hear me?" Kedair tapped it. "Yeah, I can hear you kind of," she said with a hopeful smile.

"We...a way to...and beam you...did you...the away team?," Captain Ezri Dax said through the combadge. "Yes Captain," she answered. "Good...beam you...now." Then the transporter took hold of the four crewmembers and the next thing they knew they were in the tranporter room.

"I'll take these guys to sickbay," Tarses said, holding Sam and Yuters hands as they skipped along beside him. "Have fun." Kedair smiled at him. She headed back to her quarters. She was done for the day.


End file.
